Watch Your Grease!

In Acoem USA’s Reliable Precision Maintenance (RPM) class, we discuss several key points maintenance personnel need to know about lubrication. One of those points is grease compatibility. At a recent class, our students mentioned they only used two kinds of grease. When we asked what they were, they didn’t remember the name. So, one of…

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Root Causes of Machinery Failure

As maintenance and reliability professionals we have a tremendous responsibility to keep the machines in our facilities up and running. As the entire world navigates through this pandemic, water, power, food, medicine and many other essentials have continued to be provided. Having the necessary skills and knowledge is critical to ensuring that we are able…

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The Benefits of Lubrication Training

According to several studies, industry is wasting millions of dollars by ignoring problems related to friction and wear. Companies can save money and increase machinery reliability by paying more attention to these problems. There is a compelling need for more understanding among maintenance and production personnel in the practices of reducing friction and wear. It…

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Functions of a Lubricant: Reduce Friction

A maintenance technicians’ job (function) is to keep the machines that they maintain operating reliably. Alignment, balancing, and lubrication are some examples of how they are able to keep machinery reliable. Proper lubrication of machines is absolutely critical to any reliability program. In this article, I would like to discuss how a lubricant reduces friction.…

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What You Need to Know about Bearing Lubrication

  Proper lubrication of bearings is essential if you want to maintain your machines at optimum levels.  Did you know it is estimated that 40-50 percent of bearing failures are the result of improper greasing/lubrication? That’s a significantly high percentage! So what can you do to ensure you are properly lubricating your bearings? Two things…

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The Importance of Mechanical Skills in the Data Center: Lubrication

Another important skill a data center maintenance worker needs is an understanding of the fundamentals of lubrication. Although lubrication may seem simple, there is a good deal of skill behind knowing proper lubrication methods, quantities, and the difference between over and under lubrication. And because under or over lubrication can cause serious problems such as…

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Too Much Grease (a “liquid” unbalance!)

We recently published a blog about using the Fixturlaser SMC as a lubrication tool. https://acoem.us/other-topics/using-the-smart-machine-checker-as-a-lubrication-tool/ Ironically, just a couple of weeks later I received some photos from a new SMC customer.  He got a report from his SMC stating that a chilled water pump was experiencing motor unbalance.  He took the motor apart to inspect…

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Using the Smart Machine Checker as a Lubrication Tool

The Fixturlaser Smart Machine Checker (SMC) is a great mechanic’s tool, for evaluating the overall health of rotating machinery.  But did you know it’s also a lubrication tool for greasing bearings?  Let me explain. One of the vibration measurements in the SMC is called Bearing Defect Factor.  The Bearing Defect Factor is a measurement of…

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Fresh Perspective

We all have run into situations where things just aren’t working out the way we think they should. Kind of like not seeing the forest for the tree’s. Part of our profession as trainers at VibrAlign is fielding support calls when a client has questions or has reached the point of frustration where they just…

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MACHINERY VIBRATION PROBLEMS Part 3-Lubrication

LUBRICATION Lubrication is sometimes incorrectly thought of as a job for unskilled workers, apprentices, or operators.  When I hear a maintenance person say, “I’m just an oiler”, I cringe a bit. Proper lubrication methods, formulations, quantities, and procedures are essential to machine reliability. A machine can no more do without lubrication than it can do…

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